


Concord evenings

by BBMarcello



Category: Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Two Endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 14:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BBMarcello/pseuds/BBMarcello
Summary: Oliver waits for a train





	1. Concord, 5.18pm

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me last night. Read chapter one but then choose your ending! Chapter Two for sad ending or skip to chapter three for a happy ending! Chapter Two is major character death but off screen

I’d spotted them the day before but hadn’t thought too much of it. Truth be told, they’d probably been waiting every afternoon throughout that long hot summer and I’d been too wrapped up in my own thoughts to really notice them. Just a kid and his dad, young dad at that, no more than 25 or so. But what caught my attention that day, beyond the day before, was them sitting next to me on the bench, waiting for the 5.18 to come in. So, I got to sit there and pretend to read my book, another tome I was setting my junior class in the new academic year, myself just whiling away the time until my train came in, taking me back to the fetid city, to my little Chelsea apartment. I got to listen to their chatter about cartoons and class and what Billy Fenton did that day that was so funny.

The kid looked about six years old, still at that age when they’re content to sit with dad and tell him all the stories, knowing that he’d be listening to every word. The dad was a tattooed skateboarder, long black board shorts, sandals and blue t-shirt, some band I didn’t know scrawled across his shirt. He had tattoos all over his legs and arms but none on his neck, just a simple silver chain and blue dyed hair. He had some of his kid’s blonde hair showing at the roots, the kid with long blonde hair and big blue eyes. They had a rucksack, a lunch box and a skateboard in a pile beside them on the platform with stickers all over the lunch box of the latest cartoon characters and more punky stickers on the skateboard, clearly the dad’s.

The train was running late, no big surprises there, I was content to soak up the sun, listen to them talk of what to have for dinner, what was happening at camp class the next day. By the time the train pulled in, my trousers had stuck to the bench a bit, sweat and sun and the feeling of humidity all adding to my need now to get home and peel everything off, sit and stew in a cool bath for a while.

As I stood up to get on the train, the blonde kid leapt up, running to the carriage doors, screeching “Daddy!” as a man got off the train, scooped him up and held him close. I faltered for a second but soon recovered, I was expecting a mom not another dad but then, this is another time, the openness of the couple as they moved to each other, hugged and kissed with the kid between them.

I got on the train and sat down, watched them out the window as they walked off together, the other man tall and dark-haired, in a trim suit with a tattoo peeking out over his shirt collar, the kid continuing his chatter to both his dads now, eager to fill them in on all the latest goings on. As the train pulled away, I sat back and touched my fingers to my lips, remembering another eager hugger, a constant chatter. It was so easy now to be a gay couple, to have a kid, to be themselves, I envied the couple, the kid, for a time long ago when it wasn’t so easy, when every subtle touch meant the world to me.


	2. The postcard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sad ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Srsly, skip to chapter 3 if you don't want sadness.

I got back to Chelsea a little after 8, ready for that bath, no longer thinking of academic prep or my tenure application, just remembering. Remembering me at 24, instantly lost to a boy, a man, swiped sideways by the depth of his feelings, so open, so honest, so brave. And mine, what a goddamn fool.

I dropped my bag on the couch and looked up at the wall, a framed postcard still there, after all these years. We’d tried for joy, once, long ago, but it was a different time, one that could only end in dinner drudgery for me, trapped for years to come. By the time the boys left home, she was beyond ready to divorce me, I was a void, a nothing, a shell.

And now, here I was, alone, at 54, my love had been too bright, too open, too joyous, he’d been killed by a drunk driver ten years ago, crossing the street in Concord. Annella had written to me, on one of her good days, let me know he was gone, just those words in an email, he’s gone. His death and then Pro’s not long after had hastened her dementia, I was sure of it. It had hastened a great sorrow in me, one my wife couldn’t rescue me from.

Such is life, as I sit here, looking at that postcard, feeling his touch, hearing the cicadas, smelling the lavender in the air, and knowing that tomorrow, I’ll be sitting on that bench again, at Concord station, watching that couple greet each other after a hard day’s work and listening to their boy recite his day to his much loved dads, and I’ll be alone again and still.


	3. The twirl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The happy ending as we all want one, despite the sad endings.

I got back to Chelsea a little after 8, ready for that bath, no longer thinking of academic prep or my tenure application, just remembering. Remembering me at 24, instantly lost to a boy, a man, swiped sideways by the depth of his feelings, so open, so honest, so brave. And mine, what a goddamn fool. I dropped my bag on the couch and looked up at the wall, a framed postcard still there, after all these years.

I remembered his touch, the sound of the cicadas, the smell of the lavender and, lost in my reverie of days long gone, I missed the initial rattle of his keys in the door, only coming back to myself at the sound of his bag dropping next to mine on the couch, seconds before he dropped himself into my lap. For a squeeze, for a hug, for a kiss deep and long.

“What are you thinking about, old man?”

I breathed in his smell, the city, his hair and smiled at him, “just you goose, just you. I’m glad you’re home early, let’s go get Chinese tonight.”

He leapt off me, a twirl in front of the couch, and pulled me up to him for another hug, another kiss.

I held his hands and, knowing that I could and would continue to hold them outside, in that fetid city of ours, told him I loved him, I always had and that I’d never been happier than the day I came back on the train, to B., and saw him waiting for me on that platform bench, a lifetime ago.


End file.
